Pages

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Google unveils music subscription service at I/O conference

Google has revealed the Google Play Music All Access
music subscription service at its I/O developer conference in San Francisco.

According to Google, the service will give access to
streaming millions of songs, in addition to the company's existing music store
and locker. The service will cost N1, 600.00 (9.99 USD, pending on the rate of
Dollars) with a free trial for the first month. Users who start their trial by
the end of June will pay only USD 7.99 a month.

In other developments arising from the conference, it was
stated that the special Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone handset will support LTE
and be offered for USD 649 on Google Play.

Google introduced the new Google Play games servicesfor
Android app developers to integrate more social features in games. It also
launched new location APIs, Google Cloud Messaging enhancements to improve
device-server communications, and cross platform sign-on, which lets users sign
into an app once for all their devices, using Google+. It also previewed a new
Integrated Development Environment (IDE) called Android Studio, developed with
Java specialist JetBrains.

The company also previewed a number of upcoming web
products, including the next-generation video codec VP9 for faster
video-streaming and the requestAutocomplete API for faster payment over the
Chrome browser. The Google Wallet has also been integrated with Gmail to
facilitate person-to-person payments.

The social network Google+ received a re-look to
facilitate moving between mobile devices and the desktop. Other new features
add to the online photo experience, including automatic back-up of photos from
mobile devices and an 'awesome' editing option. The Google+ Hangouts feature
has been upgraded to support unified messaging across Android and iOS devices
as well as computers. The new standalone Hangouts app supports communication
with text, photos and videos for groups of up to 10.

In search, Google has added the possibility for users to
set reminders by voice and previewed "spoken answers" on laptops and
desktops in Chrome. The company also previewed changes to Google Maps to offer
more individualized maps. Building on starred and recommended places, the map
updates with each click to incorporate personalized and local information
relevant to the user. The updated Maps are currently available by invitation
for preview.